The emic–etic approach to personality measurement in personnel selection

Abstract The current study investigates the incremental validity of emic personality traits over etic traits and GMA in predicting job performance. Demographics, cognitive ability and personality data from two samples, of Chinese and Romanian workers from the same company, were collected and contrasted with performance data collected at two points in time. Etic personality constructs in the area of conscientiousness have criterion validity for both the Chinese and the non-Chinese sample. Emic personality dimensions don't have incremental validity over etic traits for the Chinese sample. Potential predictive bias associated with measures of cognitive ability and personality on a sample including Romanian and Chinese working adults was also investigated.